What stopped Sandy: How FEMA's regulations saved Windansea

Nov. 28, 2012

Windansea owner Dan Shields (right) and his son J.R., 17, of Highlands, evaluate damage to the outside ground floor of the restaurant on Sunday. / MARY FRANK/staff photographer

What it took to build the Windansea

• About 80 12-inch diameter pilings driven 30 to 40 feet into the ground • Steel rods in the walls • Steel plates to connect the rods to the roof • Other structural steel to hold the floor to the walls Source: Robert W. Adler & Associates

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Branin’s Wharf stood on the Highlands waterfront, overlooking the Shrewsbury River and Sandy Hook, little more than a seafood shack when Dan Shields bought it with a partner in September 2000 for $690,000.

They began tearing it down to renovate and that’s when the trouble started — trouble Shields is now thankful for after Sandy overwhelmed the borough.

Shields and his partner, Robert Higgins, a chef, expected to spend $300,000 to spruce it up. But surprise after surprise arose in the guts of the old building. And because the demolition devoured more than half of the existing structure, officials stepped in.

Shields and Higgins had to complete the job under the new building code and that meant meeting Federal Emergency Management Agency standards. The additional cost: more than $1 million.

“We were trying to improve something on the ground with the lowest possible cost. I’ll never forget when they issued the stop work order,” he said. “I felt like I was victimized, like FEMA was trying to prove a point, trying to flex their muscles and trying to take it out on a little guy like me.”

Shields would jokingly call the restaurant a fortress when speaking to a FEMA official he kept in close contact with, he said. Now he uses that word with pride.

For where Sandy ravaged other restaurants and homes in Highlands, the Windansea largely escaped Sandy’s wrath.

This is a story of how FEMA’s regulations saved a pair of restaurant owner’s dreams.

Waves and codes

FEMA sets base flood elevations in areas prone to flooding — a prediction of what level the water will rise to in the next “100-year storm,” a storm that has a 1 percent chance of occurring each year. The elevations are tied to flood insurance, which FEMA underwrites.

Towns must adopt those elevations in their building codes or risk missing out on disaster aid for the permanent repair or reconstruction of insurable buildings sitting in a high-risk flood area. And residents in a community that doesn’t abide by those elevations can’t get federally-backed flood insurance. For those reasons, towns that disregard FEMA’s standards are few.

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Hurricane construction

The restaurant property at 56 Shrewsbury Ave. sat in a high-risk flood area known as a V Zone, an area subject to a 100-year flood with additional “velocity hazard” or wave action. That mean the water during those storms can crash into buildings, said Robert Adler, a West Long Branch architect that designed Windansea.

Branin’s Wharf sat on the ground. The building code called for the new structure to be raised.

The Windansea — named after a famed surfing beach in La Jolla, Calif., — now sits comfortably above the water. It took about eighty pilings driven 30 to 40 feet into the ground to get it there, about nine feet above the old restaurant

The pilings are like “tapered telephone poles” and the roundness of the poles allows the water to rush by without damaging them, Adler said.

The actual building includes structural steel to keep the roof from blowing off in a storm. That can happen if pressure within the building, created by hurricane-force winds, is suddenly released when an object crashes through a window. Steel plates, rods and clips connect the roof to the walls and the walls to the floor.

To further protect the new restaurant, Adler designed the building one foot above FEMA’s base flood elevation at the time.

“Mother Nature never gets the memo about what the (base flood elevation) is,” he said.

There were other costs. The sprinkler system set Shields and Higgins back $100,000.

The new code also required the restaurant to install an elevator to comply with Americans with Disability Act standards, at a cost of $80,000, Shields said.

That however, has paid off. More people with disabilities have frequented the place.

Sandy misses Windansea

Shields, a lifelong surfer and native of Highlands who also works as a salesman for a distributor that supplies food to supermarkets, was on hand during the superstorm with his son, J.R., 17, a high school senior.

Disregarding an order to evacuate, they witnessed the fury of the storm’s waves that crashed into buildings on the waterfront. One of the Windansea’s floating docks, which boaters use to visit the restaurant and other outdoor property, was tossed into the restaurant next door.

“We didn’t believe Mother Nature could do that,” J.R. said.

Wearing wet suits, they hurriedly raised up their belongings in their home across the street from the restaurant. Two feet of water inundated their living room. Shields now plans to elevate the home as well.

But the storm’s waves missed the restaurant’s living space by about two feet, letting the eatery escape largely unscathed.

All because of those FEMA regulations.

Dan Shields is looking back, happy now with the $2.4 million tab for his restaurant that sustained the wrath of Sandy while others in Highlands did not.